Life and career
Kingsley was born Sidney Kirschner in New York. He studied at Cornell University, where he began his career writing plays for the college dramatic club. He joined the Group Theater for the production of his first major work. In 1933 the company performed his play Men in White. Set in a hospital, the play dealt with the issue of illegal abortion, 1930s medical and surgical practices, and the struggle of one promising physician who must choose to dedicate his life to medicine or devote himself to his fiancée. The play was a box-office smash.
Kingsley followed this success with the play Dead End in 1935, a story about slum housing and its connection to crime. The play was fairly successful, eventually spawning the film Dead End Kids. In 2022, Dead End was adapted as a musical and released as a concept album (aka audiobook musical). "Dead End the Musical" was written by Neil Fishman (Music), Harvey Edelman (Lyrics), and Peter C. Palame (Book). Kingsley's two successful plays were followed by his 1936 anti-war play Ten Million Ghosts and his 1939 The World We Make, which were flops and had short runs.
Despite reaching the rank of lieutenant in the United States Army during World War II, soon after 1951 HUAC put Kingsley's name on the Hollywood Blacklist.[1][2] Being on the Blacklist is the main reason he never had a Hollywood film adaption after 1951.
In 1943, Kingsley returned to his previous success with the historical drama The Patriots. This play, which told the story of Thomas Jefferson and his activities in the young American republic, won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play. Kingsley continued writing for the theater late into his career, adapting Arthur Koestler's novel Darkness at Noon for the stage in 1951, and writing Lunatics and Lovers in 1954 and Night Life in 1962.
In addition to his work for the stage, Kingsley wrote a number of scripts for Hollywood productions, mostly based on his own work. He later also wrote the scripts and templates for numerous television series and television films.
His marriage to actress Madge Evans in 1939[3] lasted until her death in 1981. The couple lived together in their 18th century Oakland, New Jersey home for 42 years.
Meeting him in 1957, Michael Korda described Kingsley as "a short, powerfully built man with broad shoulders, a big head, and rough-hewn features that made him look like a bust by Sir Jacob Epstein.[4] Kingsley hired Korda as an assistant to do research for a screenplay he was writing for CBS on the Hungarian Revolution which was eventually canceled.[4]
In 1964, Kingsley was elected president of the Dramatists Guild of America[5] and in 1983, he was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.[6]
Kingsley died of a stroke on March 20, 1995, in his home in Oakland, New Jersey.[7]
